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VisualEditor: Newly-created list items are deliberately not merged with nearby lists - change this?
Open, MediumPublicFeature

Description

In Firefox 20.0.1:

  1. Edit a page that has a bulleted list.
  2. Place the cursor on the first bullet item.
  3. Click the "Bullet List" button. The first bullet item loses its bullet. (Correct.)
  4. Click the "Bullet List" button a second time. The first bullet comes back (correct), but there is now a blank line displayed below it.

Similarly, if you remove & add a bullet in the middle of the list, you get blank lines above AND below the item.

Similarly, if you do this with a numbered list, the blank line breaks the numbering: the list items below the blank line start over from "1".


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement

Details

Reference
bz48051

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 22 2014, 1:36 AM
bzimport set Reference to bz48051.

(In reply to comment #0)

In Firefox 20.0.1:

  1. Edit a page that has a bulleted list.
  2. Place the cursor on the first bullet item.
  3. Click the "Bullet List" button. The first bullet item loses its bullet.

(Correct.)

  1. Click the "Bullet List" button a second time. The first bullet comes back

(correct), but there is now a blank line displayed below it.

Similarly, if you remove & add a bullet in the middle of the list, you get
blank lines above AND below the item.

Similarly, if you do this with a numbered list, the blank line breaks the
numbering: the list items below the blank line start over from "1".

Yes, because otherwise we'd be unexpectedly merging a <p> with a following <ul> (or whatever). You can always actively choose to merge the lists from this position by deleting the blank line between the lists (technically, this is a slug).

This is the deliberately-chosen behaviour for this. I take it you'd expect lists to instead automatically merge, and you'd have to split them rather than the other way around? X followed by X is not generally a direct reverse step (that's what undo is for), but you expected it to work that way around?

Interesting point. I think nontechnical end-users will have a different perspective, however. Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs will produce a single bulleted list as the result. Your users are going to be accustomed to that behavior.

When an end-user clicks the button the first time, and the bullet disappears, they won't be thinking that "a bulleted list has become two lists." They'll simply think "a bullet symbol has been removed."

(In reply to comment #2)

Interesting point. I think nontechnical end-users will have a different
perspective, however. Both Microsoft Word and Google Docs will produce a
single bulleted list as the result. Your users are going to be accustomed to
that behavior.

Possibly.

When an end-user clicks the button the first time, and the bullet disappears,
they won't be thinking that "a bulleted list has become two lists." They'll
simply think "a bullet symbol has been removed."

Not two lists - they'll have a paragraph and a list.

I'll make sure we do some real-world tests with non-technical people to come to a decision on this.

FWIW, I also just checked OpenOffice.org, and they also simply remove and restore the bullet, keeping a single bulleted list.

Aklapper changed the subtype of this task from "Task" to "Feature Request".Feb 4 2022, 12:24 PM
Aklapper removed a subscriber: rmoen.